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Brewer, P., Dent, H. L., & Sebby, A. G. (2023). Leading A Sustainable Workforce: Assessing the Pandemic’s Influence on Job Insecurities, Anxiety, Work

Overload, and Turnover Intentions in Hospitality. Archives of Business Research, 11(8). 96-117.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/abr.118.15273

workers and minorities and industries such as hospitality, leisure, and healthcare faced the

greatest impacts.

Often referred to as the Great Resignation, the U.S. Bureau and Labor [55] report that job

openings and quit rates reached record highs in 2021, while layoffs and discharges fell to record

lows [44]. Although vaccines and boosters have been in place since Spring 2021, current

workforce numbers still fall below pre-COVID employee records within the hospitality

industry, displaying the greatest impact of workforce depletion due to Covid-19 and the Great

Resignation [38].

According to the World Health Organization [62], perceptions influenced by COVID-19 included

emotional distress from infectiousness and mortality rates, negative experiences when dealing

with colleagues, and customer interactions due to mandated COVID protocols. Specifically, in

the hospitality industry, researchers found that the fear of COVID-19 increased restaurant

employees’ perception of job insecurity and emotional exhaustion [11]. The more demanding

work environment stressors that occurred after the COVID-19 pandemic also lowered job

satisfaction and resulted in substandard organizational commitment [61].

The service quality that customers receive from hospitality employees directly affects

organizational performance and customers’ perceptions [41, 48]. Before the pandemic,

hospitality employees typically experienced occupational stressors such as customer

confrontation, limited downtime, and inconsistent and lengthy work shifts [48, 61]. With

substantial layoffs, furloughs, restructuring, business closings, and economic instability

resulting from the pandemic, employees’ sensitivities regarding their employment were

magnified. Personal, job, and organizational realities associated with a perceived lack of control

are correlated with measured job insecurity leading to attitudinal reactions such as reduced

commitment, reduced satisfaction, and one’s intention to quit [3, 49]. The consequences of

these factors could influence the employee’s intention to leave the job or change careers.

The current study explores factors that affect hospitality employees’ turnover intentions by

analyzing the effect of the pandemic on employees’ anxiety, organizational changes, job

stressors, and locus of control. Previous literature suggested that job satisfaction and insecurity

are associated with employee turnover intention [11, 61]. As an unprecedented pandemic with

heightened job stressors and dual mediators, studies on employee anxiety regarding

employment conditions are scarce. Therefore, research must investigate the labor shortages

during this period to discern if turnover intentions were due to employees’ anxiety about the

uncertain pandemic or other factors. Understanding employee responses and behaviors

regarding turnover intentions due to the pandemic can help ascertain factors to combat labor

shortages due to unexpected circumstances in the future. This will also establish a basis for

managers and employees to manage lasting pandemic effects.

This study builds upon three research objectives: (1) To examine predictors of hospitality

employees’ turnover intention using the combination of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)

[2] and the Theory of Content, Causes, and Consequences of Job Insecurity [4], (2) compare the

effects of rarely explored predictors (COVID-19 anxiety and work locus of control) to those of

widely researched predictors (organizational changes and job stressors) on employees’

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Archives of Business Research (ABR) Vol. 11, Issue 8, August-2023

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

turnover intention via three mediators (job insecurity, job satisfaction, and turnover intention),

and (3) identify potential solutions to lessen job stressors and turnover intention. Additional

goals of this study are to assist Hospitality Human Resources, practitioners, and stakeholders

in utilizing the study results for developing crisis management plans and allocating resources

for employee engagement, motivation, and mental health to reduce turnover intentions to

create a sustainable workforce.

LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT

The theoretical background of this study builds upon two widely used theories: the Theory of

Planned Behavior (TPB) [2] and the Theory of Content, Causes, and Consequences of Job

Insecurity [4] to explain turnover intention in the hospitality industry during the pandemic

specifically. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) establishes a method for predicting

individual intent by framing individual behavior as driven by behavior intentions determined

by an individual’s attitude toward behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control

[2] The theory encompasses individual motivation (defined as a conscious plan), the

individual’s attitude toward the planned behavior, the subjective impacts of the behavior on the

individual’s social environment, and the ease of executing the behavior [26]. Under this theory,

individuals are more likely to commit to certain behaviors if they believe they have a high

probability of success. TPB has been applied in varied domains as a predictor for voluntary

employee turnover [56], employee intention to support organizational change [27], and early

retirement intention [57]. For this study, the TPB was applied as a foundation theory to explain

how employees in the hospitality industry form their attitudes based on the subjective impacts

of the current social environment (the COVID-19 pandemic) and to predict their intention to

leave their job.

Job insecurity is an individual’s uncertainty about their future employment or doubts about the

continuation of the job [60]. Since employee turnover intention could derive from a

multidimensional perspective, this study also applied the Theory of Content, Causes, and

Consequences of Job Insecurity [4] to strengthen the conceptual framework and explain various

threats to continuity in a job situation. The theory attempts to explain antecedents of job

security by developing a scale that measures how job insecurity leads to employees’ attitudinal

reactions, such as intentions to quit, reduced commitment, and satisfaction. In this theory, job

insecurity is derived from employees’ perceptions of organizational changes, role ambiguity,

and locus of control. Job insecurity could lead to higher somatic complaints and turnover

intentions, lower organizational commitment, trust, and job satisfaction [4]. Given that job

insecurity is likely to associate with turnover intention, this theory and its measurement scale

are utilized in this study to test several substantive hypotheses about antecedents and

consequences of job insecurity on employees in the hospitality industry.

The Influence of Employee Anxiety Resulting from the COVID-19 Pandemic on Job

Insecurity and Job Satisfaction

Wang et al. [59], define anxiety as a “complex emotional state of tension, worry, or depression,

causing physiological and behavioral responses, which belong to a person’s intrinsic and

subjective nervous emotions such as fear of the unknown or unfamiliarity with places and

tasks”. Anxieties surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic have been pathologized as corona- phobia, commonly comprised of two subsets of anxiety symptoms: somatic modality